Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

by Mike Stangle

  Holly Humphrey’s dad is very rich and very angry. He is equally insane, too. Very ill-tempered. It turns out he is also spending some time on the island of Nantucket. Furious, looking for his daughter. I don’t know this. All of a sudden, I am made aware. After the twelfth call she has sidebarred (and fourth Stoli O-bomb), I finally ask her who has been calling her. “Just my daddy,” she explains. Great. A little more digging, and I put together the obvious. Her father has been calling her because he either:

  1. Wants to take her to the airport so she will make her flight.

  2. Wants to kill her, because, well . . . I get it.

  3. Wants to take her to the airport, so he can have her killed once she’s arrived in Boston, giving him an alibi . . . Smart guy, no wonder he’s loaded.

  Holly Humphrey is ducking calls left and right, looking over her shoulder with fear in her eyes—just trying to avoid her old man. At this point, I’ve now become drunk enough to be thinking about how badly I’d like to make sweet, crazy, risky, rich-gal love to Holly before her flight. Strategically convenient bonus: my house is right next to the airport! It just made so much sense, everybody. One problem: our only ride is my ’86 Yamaha moped, and I am (as my dad would put it) absolutely cockeyed. Way too drunk to drive. Naturally, I immediately decide to drive. The real problem is that my reliable little moped is only 50 cc’s (that’s an engine term, gals). The thing barely supports my giant, lumbering frame; there was no way it will take on me, Holly, and her five hundred pounds of high-maintenance luggage. I shoot my roommate Tim (also a friend, confidant, state hockey champ, man-babe, and coworker) a glance as he is mixing drinks behind the bar. Tim has seen that glance a thousand times. He no-look throws me his moped keys. Did I mention Tim has a moped, too? We were the Scooter Boys! Good gang name? Nope. But it was very literal. Tim was the leader of the Scooter Boys. You know why? Because Tim has a sick moped. The thing absolutely flew. Somewhere along the line, a mechanic did some after-market work on it, and the results made you feel like you were straddling a Tomahawk missile. Added bonus: it was also a two-seater. My ’86 Yamaha, although awesome, only had room for one. With me? Just short of room for one. Timmy and I had a gentlemen’s understanding that, should either of us be so lucky as to have a gal in tow, the two-seater moped went to that guy. Rules of the road. One might ask what would happen if we were both lucky enough to have a gal on the same night. Well, you’ve only got one option at that point: expensive group taxi. As luck would have it, we didn’t take one group taxi that summer.

  Back to reality, folks. I’ve got a crazy blonde, an angry rich father, a jacked-up moped, and a race against the clock—let’s focus! We find Tim’s moped in the back alley of the restaurant. That alley is all cobblestone. Ever ride a moped over three-hundred-year-old New England cobblestone? No? Try it with a ticking-blond-sex-bomb on the back. As we take off down the alley, I am at half-mast before our first RPM. By the time we turn out of the alley, I am at a full tuck-under. With Holly Humphrey on the back and a full erection in my Nantucket reds, we are off! Assuming most of you aren’t familiar with the layout of Nantucket, let me fill you in—there is the port, where I work. It’s the “downtown” part of the island. The cobblestone alleys bob and weave in every direction, further confirming that everyone in New England, even back when the town was being designed, is or was a complete drunk. It’s like driving around a child’s finger painting. Makes no sense whatsoever. Luckily, the cobblestone keeps people from getting going too fast; otherwise it’d be accident city. You have to weave through about a cumulative mile of this nonsense to get out of town and on the main roads toward my house, the airport, and intercourse.

  Holly Humphrey is holding on tight, and I mean tight. I am approaching an intersection about two hundred yards upstream of the Gazebo. I have the right of way, but always look, just to be safe. To my left, BAM, this giant, black, ridiculous, $150,000, tinted-window, red-button-from-MIB-capable, fucking intimidating Mercedes SUV almost splatters my brains and guts and Holly’s tits everywhere. I’m talking within a foot and a half of really doing some damage to us. I swear to God, the SUV coming at us was the Canyonero from The Simpsons (12 yards long, 2 lanes wide, 65 tons of American pride!) Do you know how mad Timmy would have been if I wrecked his scooter and he had to cover my shifts? True to my BAC, I start yelling at the driver like a madman on a scooter. Just as I’m doing so, Holly Humphrey (on back) buries her head away from the SUV and starts screaming in my ear that that’s her dad and to hit it! Crazy dad is on to us! Oh, you’re wondering if this is the same crazy dad that’s been blowing her phone up for the past two hours? Yep. That’s him. An angry rich dad looking for his fucked-up daughter who has been avoiding him. The ironic thing is that upon spotting us on the moped, he doesn’t get happier. I look into his eyes, and he into mine. Had that moment been set in an old western movie, that song would play that always plays right before they say “Draw!” The drawn-out time that two cowboys look each other in the eye is always portrayed as at least fifteen seconds. What were the rules there? With each cowboy’s gun holstered, the two parties are to just stare at each other. At some point, they should have a race to kill the other person. No one will ever say draw. Then one guy dies. Great plan, Wild West.

  Back to reality: Holly’s dad is done staring and SHIT IS ON. Holly Humphrey says hit it, so I hit it. We take off down a side street. You know what angry dads do in that kind of situation? They fucking chase you! Thank God I’ve had a few drinks, because the chase scene that ensues takes some nerves, my friend. If the Wild West draw song was playing a few seconds before, it has since been replaced by the song that plays during the credits of The Benny Hill Show.

  It becomes very clear that this town is about to see the David versus Goliath of high-speed chases. Giant Mercedes SUV versus 75 cc moped. Side note here: the speed governor on this particular moped had been removed, because Tim is a badass, so this thing could really fly. Here we are, angry lead-foot dad versus horny half-in-the-bag waiter and real-life Looney Toon on the back. If this was a prizefight, the tale of the tape would favor Angry Daddy by a mile. This is Nantucket, though, my summer homeland. Now, I won’t pretend to be well seasoned in the ways of gambling, but I will tell you with confidence that there are three home field advantages a man should never bet against:

  1. Tom Brady in Foxboro

  2. Justin Timberlake on planet Earth

  3. Mike Stangle in Nantucket

  I know the town like the back of my dick! Goliath’s going down! Off I go, utilizing all 75 cc’s of the hog I was riding. LEFT RIGHT SECRET ALLEY LEFT LEFT MORE COBBLESTONES HEY ALEX ILL SEE YOU TONIGHT AT THE CHICKEN BOX! LEFT RIGHT RIGHT THIS BONER WON’T GO AWAY! Holly? Oh, she is doing exactly what you’d expect a lunatic of her caliber to be doing: talking dirty/crazy in my ear during the whole fucking thing. That is for the first few minutes. As she realizes I am losing her dad, she further encourages me with an OTPHJ (Outside The Pants Hand Job). Believe it or not, I lose the guy by way of nineteen different side street maneuvers. By the time we sputter into my driveway, Tim’s bike is overheating and Holly’s finger has fully penetrated my butt.

  My friends, I learned something that day. I learned that I am not Dave Stangle. I just can’t handle the crazy ones! I’m not built for it. Dave, more for you, buddy. By the time I caught my breath and could digest what had happened over the prior twenty minutes, Holly Humphrey had wandered off to the airport in her high heels. Thank God.

  I recently found out Holly was secretly engaged during this entire fiasco. After a little digging, I learned that her fiancé is a big-time coke dealer. Makes sense. I’ll probably be murdered for a lousy OTPHJ.

  I Farted on a Baby

  And Other Things I Need to Get off My Chest

  (Dave)

  I don’t get ashamed easily. It doesn’t mean I don’t recognize my own flaws; it’s just that I’m not trying to improve on them whatsoever. I like being a dirtbag. I own it. Being a dirtbag is only a few shades f
rom being a bad boy, and chicks love bad boys. I’m like a second-rate bad boy, so chicks sort of dig it, but not that much. At least it helps me understand why I’m twenty-nine and still single, with a trajectory path of creepy-forty-six-year-old-uncle-who-people-suspect-might-be-gay-because-he-never-settled-down status. Still, if that’s the vibe I give off, then I say most people don’t really know me very well. Even my iPhone doesn’t know me very well, and I spend most of my time glued to my iPhone. It still autocorrects butthole to buttonhole, even though I talk about the first thing all the time and the second thing never.

  As long as we’re putting it all out there—here are several things I’m well aware are wrong with me.

  A major flaw keeping me from being 100 percent likable by women is that I full-on don’t recycle. I just haven’t embraced it. I won’t go more than 1 percent out of my way to participate in what I realize is an incredibly important group effort toward our children’s future. It isn’t that I’m ignorant or don’t get why we’re doing it. No, I know, I just don’t do it. It’s a total scumbag move, and I get it. Yet if I need to discard a giant plastic bottle and there isn’t an already extremely organized recycling effort all clearly marked for me . . . that fucker is going straight into the trash. You know what makes it ironic? I worked on the back of a recycling truck for six fucking summers. I literally recycled for a living day in and day out, every single day for six summers in a row. As soon as I got home? Chug a Diet Coke and toss it in with the trash, feeling no shame.

  Women don’t like that I’m not very emotional. I personally disagree with this assertion, because I’ve cried several times in recent memory—most recently while watching The Lion King. Still, at this point, it’s my vote versus every woman I’ve ever been involved with. I’m greatly outnumbered, so logic tells me I should concede the point and admit a couple of my emotional switches are janky. I like to think of myself more as emotionally grounded rather than emotionally absent. And sure, maybe I’m a little selfish when it comes to emotional stuff, too. For instance, if someone I know is going to die, I’d prefer they do it right after New Year’s Day. January and February are great months to grieve. I basically have no plans then. Don’t die on me in June, when things are about to heat up socially. I can’t grieve through Memorial Day weekend; be reasonable.

  But my worst flaw is that I farted on a baby once. Guilty as charged, folks. Don’t get all high and mighty, like who is this pig who farts on babies? It can happen to anyone. Tornados can happen to anyone, too, and no one gets mad at them (besides Hellen Hunt in Twister), because they are a part of nature, just like a mid-commute fart. Tornados take babies sometimes. This wasn’t nearly as bad, so let’s be thankful the baby remained unharmed, physically. I was walking to work from the Upper East Side to Midtown. I never wanted to live on the Upper East Side, but I had to temporarily move there after Big Sex dumped me. The walk is 1.3 miles and takes about twenty-two minutes. On the day in question, I had a really nice suit-tie combo on, my headphones were in, and my “spring into 2013” mix was peaking. I was in the homestretch, coming down Third Avenue, when I ran into your classic New York City commuter pickle. After commuting to and from work by foot for five-plus years, I understand what NASCAR is like. If you see your hole, you better hit it. There is nothing worse than getting caught behind a slow commuter, or even worse—a couple of fat tourists. There are no fat people living in Manhattan. That’s a fact. People vary in size, but no one is actually fat. If you see fat people in front of you, you’re stuck behind tourists. That’s the pedestrian equivalent of being stuck behind a school bus.

  Back to the scene. In front of me was a lady pushing a baby in a stroller at a respectable pace. She was moving at a decent clip, but I was late and needed to make a pass. There was someone coming the other way, but I still had a small window to make my move. It was so small, in fact, that it required me to turn my hips sideways while still facing forward, a little maneuver I like to call the “Stangle Shuffle.” All the men in my family know it well; it’s learned early in the world of giants. It consists of a forward-moving walk with the hips and torso rotating from side to side in order to squeeze through tight spaces. When you get really good at it, you can do it with a beer in each hand. At that point, you’ve learned to communicate with unique system of head nods. It is most often executed at large crowd events such as concerts, house parties, and Tea Party rallies. In this particular case, on the sidewalk of Third Avenue, I executed the perfect Stangle Shuffle to gain a better position on the sidewalk. As my hips were turned right and I was in midstride, mid-pass, I did something else that all Stangle men learn at an early age—I let out a duck fart. A rip-roaring duck fart, guys. It went directly onto the baby I was passing. My immediate thought was that baby was going to start crying. I farted on my little cousin once, years ago when he was six. He cried pretty hard. He was such a little pussy. I can’t remember when I was six, but I’d like to think that I would have found that funny. It’s not like I gave him a facial; that would have been way more fucked-up. The baby seemed okay, though. I guess you can’t really judge when you shit yourself four times a day with butt mud. The mom, though? She wasn’t as forgiving. We had ourselves a long conversation about it.

  I am usually pretty good in awkward situations. Some would say awkward is my natural medium. One time, I went on a first date, and it went really well. I brought the girl back to my apartment and she absolutely fell in love with my dog, Frank. We took him for a quick walk around the block, so he could do his thing before I made my move. He got outside and immediately took a huge dump. In that huge dump was a used condom he had found in my trash and decided to eat the night before. Try explaining that one.

  Some of my most awkward moments happen when I’m by myself. It’s why I don’t think I could ever get married. If anyone was around me when some of this stuff happens to me, I’d be toast. Recently, I had just bought some new clothes, and I was in my fudgies (underwear), trying them on in front of the mirror at my apartment. I put this one new shirt on and looked at my reflection and confidently said out loud, “Fuck yeah, I look hot.” Then, when I turned to take it off and fold it, I let out a rip-roaring fart and just completely sharted. You know you sharted before you even feel it, because of the distinct sound it makes. I didn’t feel so hot anymore. It was time to enter cleanup phase. I looked like Danny DeVito as the Penguin, walking across my apartment to the bathroom. Twenty minutes before all of this happened, I had hung up a few semi-wrinkled garments in the bathroom, cranked the shower as hot as it would go to get a good steam going, and shut the door (a great move when you’re in a pinch, by the way). So when I opened the door, I could barely let the steam escape before plunging down on the john. It was a jungle, my friends.

  Freshly sharted, I took an explosive shit in a very moist sauna. I’m dripping head to toe in sweat, possibly suffering the effects of dehydration. I actually had been avoiding looking to my right, where the TP is kept, because there could be a chance we were out of TP and at that point, well, I might lose it. It comes in threes! I very much need to get into the shower, face opposite the showerhead, and do my best Vince Wilfork three-point stance for the next few hours. Good night!

  Punched by a Midget, Directly in My Penis

  (Dave)

  If our dad ever reads this book (which he won’t), this may be the only chapter he enjoys. Our dad doesn’t read books like this. He reads books about Abe Lincoln or books by Bill O’Reilly. He recently read a book about Abe Lincoln by Bill O’Reilly. That’s a fact. Should someone slip an Abe Lincoln book cover over this book to trick him, and should he open to this very chapter, he may actually read it. For some reason, of everything to pick from, our dad finds this story to be his favorite. It involves several elements that old men love: bar fights, midgets, and humiliated sons. Since the title gives away the ending, I’m not spoiling anything by saying that our old man was laughing about this incident before I even had the ice pack on my wiener. You’d think a guy with a m
ule for a dick would feel some sympathy for me. Nope.

  In 2008 I was young, fresh out of college, ambitious, and full of wonder. I was carrying around a bachelor’s degree, dick swinging, just tickling the world to get it laughing before I was ready to finger it. I was studying to take the LSAT and working several part-time jobs. At first, I was the manager at Gilgo Beach in Long Island.1 That job was sick, but it wasn’t ideal for studying. When I wasn’t ogling one of the high school girls who worked for me (relax, I was twenty-three . . . ish), I was getting high behind a lifeguard stand. Keep in mind lifeguard stands are not enclosed structures that provide privacy from those you don’t wish to see you get high. They are a couple of two-by-fours, with a bench at the top. It didn’t even make sense! I needed my days to study and my nights to make enough money, so I ended up getting a job as a doorman at a club called the Nutty Irishman in nearby Bay Shore, Long Island. This place was an absolute disaster. To every chin-strap-wearing, flat-brim-hat-sporting, old-Acura-with-tinted-windows-driving Long Island dickhead, this was his mecca. It was also the bar closest to where the Fire Island ferry lets off. With the last ferry leaving Fire Island at 1 a.m., we became the spillover for Pauly D and the gang to come drink Heinekens. I’m six four, at the time probably weighed about 230 pounds, and I was by far the smallest bouncer at the bar. These guys were washed-up football players, prison yard guards, gym coaches, and prison yard gym coaches. They were monsters. One of the guys actually told me a story about how he killed someone in Queens once. Because of my whiteness and relatively pussy persona compared to the other bouncers, I acquired the nickname “Little Dave.” When it came time to get rough, I was always given mop-up duty. When two meatheads wanted to charge each other like rhinos, it was the real bouncers who would do suplexes and sleeper holds. While they were laying down T-bones and full nelsons, I would hold back their girlfriends. I became the butt of just about every joke. I loved it, though. These giant knuckleheads embraced me for being so little. That was a first.